


Distress Signal

by cruciifyme



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Drowning, Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, mermaid au, mlm author, the usual mermaid stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 14:06:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11254491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruciifyme/pseuds/cruciifyme
Summary: Shiro crash lands on an undiscovered planet after going through a wormhole to escape an attack on his ship. Now he's stranded on a planet that is completely water; and one of the residents has taken a liking to him.





	Distress Signal

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the Voltron Positivity Exchange! I'm sorry it's not a completed work, but I'm very busy with classwork at the moment (I'm taking three condensed summer courses... rip). I promise to finish this as soon as I can!
> 
> This is for [yanderemakoto](http://yanderemakoto.tumblr.com)! I hope you like it :)

“Going down, I repeat, going down.”

 

The cabin shook. Shiro held onto the handle above his head and shouted into the comm in his hand. “Does anybody read me? This is the pilot of Starship A-533, we are going down.”

 

Nothing but feedback came through the radio. The heat of the ship was becoming unbearable; Shiro tugged low at his shirt collar and swore.

 

“We’ve been hit and are currently breaking through the atmosphere of an unknown planet. This is Starship A-533, does anybody read me?” He was nearly shouting. The entire cabin shook, and Shiro felt his ears pop as the ship descended. Metal bits rattled and slid past him on the floor. He swore again and threw down his radio, then started toward the control panel. A wrench flew past his head as he struggled into the pilot’s seat.

 

“This is a state of emergency. Please remain calm and report to your captain.” An automated voice echoed alongside the sirens. Shiro dropped down into his seat and leaned forward to flip a few switches. He could see nothing out the window but the reds and oranges of the flames engulfing his ship.

 

“Allura, give me a damage report.” he scanned through the screens in front of him, transparent enough not to obstruct the windshield. He barely noticed the small holographic woman pop up on his dash.

 

“Four of the five engines are shot,” she replied, clasping her hands together in front of her. She started up at Shiro with nothing but a smile on her face. Numbers started scrolling across Shiro’s screen. “Your left wing in only half-intact, the heat shield is melting-” A loud crash. “-and that was the back hatch hitting what was left of the right wing. Would you like me to start up life support systems?”

 

“Yes.” Shiro ran his hands through his hair. “Switch to manual piloting.”

 

Allura stared at him with a worried look in her eyes before smiling again. “Turning off autopilot now.”

 

A whirring noise started to die down and the lights flickered. Shiro took hold of the two joysticks in front of him and let out a deep breathe.

 

“Manual piloting engaged. You are in control, Takashi.”

 

Shiro gripped the two handles and pulled them back. The ship continued downward.

 

“Altitude’s decreasing… Allura, why isn’t she pulling up?” He tugged at the handles again, frantically.

 

“There are no wings, Captain. I suggest you retreat to the nearest escape pod,” The blue of the planet below was now visible from the cockpit. “The pod in bay three was not damaged in the hit.”

 

“Alright. Transfer all of your necessary data and any files that we need.” Shiro let go of the handles in front of him and stood up. Allura’s figure disappeared with a slight static. The pressure was dropping and the popping sensation in his ears was irritating him.

 

He pushed his way through the ship. It was a large ship for one person, and ridiculously large for a ship that wasn't carrying any freight. It had originally been designed to house a full crew, but recent advances in technology had replaced flesh and blood workers with androids and other forms of artificial intelligence.

 

Shiro ducked into the third bay. He snagged a helmet hanging next to the pod and pulled the crank on the pod’s door. Despite his build, it was still quite difficult.

 

Red lights flashed behind him as he slipped into the stark white interior of the escape pod.

 

“Welcome back, Captain!” Allura was standing on a disc across from the door. The pod had a round set up, with seats surrounding the main middle console. Shiro gripped onto the edge of a seat as the pod shook. Static rippled through Allura.

 

“Please put on your suit, as I am unsure of how the atmosphere is on this planet.” Shiro did as Allura instructed. He pulled on the jumpsuit sleeves that had been previously tied around his waist. “Deploying escape pod.”

 

There was a loud clatter from the door. Steam poured out of the lock as the pod was ejected. Shiro sat down on the seat next to Allura’s console and held tightly to the bar that was attached to the wall.

 

“Allura, lower formality.” He shut his eyes as the pod lurched up. The parachute had deployed, and they were slowly drifting down to whatever uncertain doom awaited them.

 

“Lowering formality,” she said, the fake smile still plastered on her face. Her head dropped as though she had fallen asleep standing up. Then, just as quickly, it lurched back up. Her hand unclasped from one another and she let out a heavy sigh. “You know, you could just fix my programming so I don’t get like that in states of emergency.”

 

“I don’t think I could deal with your sass in a state of emergency,” Shiro muttered. Allura glared up at him.

 

“If I could hit you right now I would.” He shook his head. Of course, he had been given the AI that had the most personality. After seven AI incompatibilities and system meltdowns in the space of a year, Coran had just handed off his personal AI.

 

“She’s a bit older, so she’ll probably work with Black,” he’d told him. Shiro nodded along.

 

“What are you going to call her? I think you should call her Al. You know, since the capital I in AI looks like a lowercase L.” Pidge had slid over on her wheeled chair and started poking around at her. “She’s really pretty, I’ll give you that much. Can I have a look at her?”

 

“Not if you keep calling her Al,” Shiro had pulled the disc out of Pidge’s reach and she’d pouted. Hunk’s head had popped up over a computer screen from across the room.

 

“If I pull her apart and look at her insides-”

 

“I don’t even want you to finish that.”

 

“You know, she’s the daughter model of one of the original Fleet AIs, Alfor. Made to look like a younger, female version.” Coran had stated while twisting at his mustache. “Very diplomatic, and very capable of running an entire ship’s system. She’s pretty fierce. Might need to update some of her language, though. She still has slang in her system from two eons ago.”

 

“I think you should call her Allura. Because she’s _alluring_.” Hunk’s voice had carried over from his spot behind the computer, and he’d wiggled his eyebrows. “Hm? Nothing? C’mon, that one was good!”

 

The name had stuck, and Pidge had opted to reprogram her. She added in a few new phrases, responses, and reactions to fit with Shiro’s personality. All he’d originally wanted was an AI that _worked_ , but he ended up with a new friend.

 

Even if that friend was programmed to be his friend by his other friend/coworker.

 

“It’s a shame to see Black go down like this.” Allura stared out the window of the pod. Shiro could see his ship falling toward the planet. “She was a good ship, Takashi.”

 

“We can still try to recover her. I don’t think I’m ready to give up on her yet.” He ran his hand over his face and dropped his head back against the wall. “Besides, all my equipment is still on board. We need to get to her regardless.”

 

“Fair enough. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to get over to her very easily. I haven’t been able to test the danger levels this planet yet. However, I can tell you that we’ll most likely be landing in water.”

 

“Thank god. What do the stats look like?” He closed his eyes and tried to will away the feeling of falling. They weren’t in the clear yet. He just wanted to know where the hell he was, and make sure that _they_ weren’t going to attack again.

 

“The percentage is going up steadily, but my current calculations are estimating that this planet is about 70% water.” Static rippled through her again. “You might need to fix me up, Takashi. Not all of my data transferred properly in the short window I was given. Namely, communications seem to be a bit out of whack.”

 

“Alright. I’ll take a look at it when we land.”

 

The descent was slow. It was painful for him to sit in the pod with Allura during that time, her emergency protocol still running in the background (check for injury, check for concussion, check breathing patterns, check…). So when they finally landed with a bit of a splash, Takashi felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

 

“The full air report is still coming in, but the atmosphere seems similar to Earth. Plenty of oxygen. Just not sure if there’s any arsenic or carbon monoxide in it.” Allura smirked at him. “I’m kidding. I’m sure it’s fine.”

 

“It better be fine, because this helmet has a crack in it.” Shiro turned the helmet over in his hands. “I think it’s still usable, but air is definitely going to come out.”

 

He peered up through the frosted window. The round hole barely showed anything of the planet; he could only see what looked blue. He took a deep breath and stood.

 

“Wish me luck.”

 

“Break a leg, Captain. Or, rather, break an arm.” Allura smiled genuinely. Shiro let out a sigh and made a mental note to bring it up to Pidge once he got back to mission control.

 

He pulled a small latch down from the wall above his seat and pressed the button under it. A ladder folded out from the wall and jutted directly into the ceiling. A small round door up top leaked smoke as the seal broke.

 

Shiro started his way up the ladder, pushed open the hatch, and climbed out top.

 

The view was astounding.

 

Everywhere he looked, he could see nothing but water. Crystal clear, blue water. A breeze ruffled his hair a bit. He turned to look behind him, seeing his ship sticking out of the ocean in the distance.

 

He ducked back down into the pod.

 

“Allura, can we expand the deck? And a water sample would be nice too.” Allura nodded in response to Shiro’s question.

 

“Right away, Captain.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It seemed like hours later that Shiro was on the expandable deck, trying to calculate the distance to his ship from where he was. She seemed years away, and without a paddle or propeller to move his pod with, he was kind of stranded.

 

Allura had, thankfully, ruled the water to not be acidic to the touch, so Shiro sat with his feet hanging in it. It was warm, quite close to what he believed water to be like at one of those oceanside resorts. He just wished for the sand between his toes, and maybe for a butler to bring him a drink… He could almost see it.

 

Something touched his foot.

 

Shiro’s eyes shot open and he pulled his foot out of the ocean at lightning speed. A rush of a fin from some creature flashed past. Probably just a fish. He let out a sigh. Nothing to worry about.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Allura, what time is it?”

 

“Time to get a watch.”

 

“Not funny.” Shiro was sitting in the pod. Upside down. He only ended up like this when he was bored. “Did you finish repairing your communications software?”

 

“Almost. And I’m not sure what time it is. The wormhole messed us up a bit.”

 

“Ah.” He bit the inside of his lip and turned to look at her. “How bad of an idea would it be to go scuba diving?”

 

Allura raised an eyebrow and laughed. “Well, considering we’re on an undiscovered planet with an exponential amount of life, I’d say it’s only a little bad. I mean, you can discover so much, but you could also get eaten by an ugly sea creature.”

 

“I think I’ll take the chance if it means I’ll have something to do.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It turned out to be an _awful_ idea.

 

Oh, he’d been having fun for about the first thirty minutes. He’d screwed on his helmet and dropped underwater. It was relatively shallow where they had landed, and he wanted to go deeper.

 

So deeper he went.

 

Shiro found himself completely lost in a kelp forest, and he was convinced that the small crack in his helmet was getting bigger.

 

“Allura, are you _sure_ I’m not losing air?” Shiro kicked his flippered feet and ran a hand against one of the vines of kelp growing towards the surface. It was dark down here, but the trickle of sunlight above was breaking through the ocean ever so slightly.

 

“I mean… your readings are fine-”

 

_Crack_.

 

“Oh, _fuck._ ” The small crack that had been worrying him was now stretching across the entire glass panel of his helmet. “Fuck!”

 

“Shiro? What’s wrong?” Allura sounded panicked, almost as much as Shiro felt. He started toward the surface.

 

“My fucking helmet cracked. Allura, I’m going to start inhaling water soon. Fuck. _Fuck._ ”

 

There was no response but static. Shiro suddenly felt weighed down, heavy as if a ton of bricks were being pushed down on him. He struggled to swim to the surface as the water filled his suit. The cracks began to spiderweb, and before Shiro knew it, the entire glass panel had imploded. Not only was he getting glass shards to his face, he was also being hit with a wall of seawater.

 

He silently wished he had gills as he kept kicking his way toward the surface. He willed his lungs to still, but near bursting point he inhaled. Water flooded his lungs and he started choking. Each ragged breath in attempt to expel the water just let more in. It burned. It burned so much. He just wanted to get to the surface-

 

Everything went black.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

First he felt the breeze. It was that same warm breeze from before. Shiro’s first thoughts wandered to the resort daydream; maybe he was lounging on a nice pool floaty, and he wouldn’t have to worry about fighting in an intergalactic space war ever again.

 

Then he heard the voice in his ear, loud and clear.

 

“Don’t move.” His eyes shot open. He quickly tried to asses where he was, what kind of danger he was in; he was lying vertically, still rocking with the waves, his helmet was floating next to him… and there was an arm wrapped around his body.

 

He was lying on someone’s chest. He tried to turn his head up to see who he was lying on, but instead he started having a coughing fit.

 

“Hey, hey! Take it easy!” The hand across his back started patting him gently. “What’s wrong with your gills, spaceman?”

 

His coughing fit gradually calmed down, and he was shushed and shifted around. He heard a muffled “Maybe I should sit you up” before feeling the body underneath him move. Some sort of serpentine tail uncoiled from where his legs were, and he was gently propped up into a sitting position.

 

He could see the face of the person who saved him, and he was more terrified than ever. Three small slits were across his neck on either side, and mop of wet brown hair fell into his eyes. His skin was darker, a natural tone that he hadn’t seen before on others of this species. He’d never personally encountered one, but all he’d ever heard were the tales of how they lured people to their dooms, tearing them apart limb by limb before actually drowning them. So, of course, his first reaction was to scream and try to scuttle away.

 

This didn’t really work.

 

The creature had a death grip on him with its arms and started shushing him louder than it had been before. “Hey! Stop screaming! Crap, dude, that really hurts my ears!”

 

Shiro bit onto his bottom lip. _Stay calm. Calm. Calmness is your friend, Takashi. Stop freaking out._

 

“Thank you.” The creature rolled its blue eyes. “Anyway, what even are you?”

 

“E-excuse me?” Shiro’s voice was still hoarse from the whole drowning thing and coughing fit, and the screaming hadn’t exactly helped.

 

“I said, what even are you?” Shiro observed its teeth while it talked- only its canines were sharp, unlike most others that he’d seen. “You come falling out of the-” it pointed up at the sky. “-big blue in your weird floating house, then you go down when you _clearly can’t_ \- and then you start yelling at the guy who saves you?”

 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro started. He realized that his hands were flush with its chest, and he tried to avoid wondering how soft its skin must be. “But, by ‘big blue’, do you mean the sky?”

 

It looked at him with a puzzled look. “What’s a sky?”

 

Shiro nodded to himself and tried to get his thoughts in place. This one didn’t seem very hostile like he’d originally thought. He sucked in a deep breath and started again.

 

“Do you have a name?” It rolled its eyes.

 

“Do you?” The tone it used was sarcastic. The two stared at each other before it burst out laughing. “Sorry, sorry. Yeah, I do.”

 

“And it is…?” Shiro let a small smile break across his face.

 

“Lance.” He smiled up at Shiro, and his white tail paddled gently in the water. “And yours?”

 

“Takashi. Shirogane. I usually just go by Shiro.” Lance nodded and let his head fall back into the gentle waves. He closed his eyes and smiled.

 

“That’s a lot of names to remember. I just have the one.”

 

“When you have them your whole life, you get kind of used to it.” Shiro turned his head to look around him. “So um… Do you think you could help me get back to my pod?”

 

“Turn around.” Shiro looked back behind himself as instructed. The pod was almost directly behind them. “At least I think that’s what you mean by ‘pod’?”

 

“Oh.” Shiro laughed at himself. “I didn’t see it there. And yeah, that’s a pod.”

 

Lance nodded and looked up at Shiro’s chest. He reached on long, webby hand out to touch it before recoiling. “Why’s it feel like that?”

 

“The suit?” Shiro raised a crooked eyebrow and watched Lance nod. “It’s so I don’t die.”

 

“A lot of good that did you.”

 

“It was a malfunction with the helmet. The glass broke.” Lance started redirecting their direction of floating, Shiro realized, as they started to drift toward his pod.

 

“That’s the weird clear stuff?” Shiro nodded. “Huh. That’s a weird word for it. G-l-a-s-s.”

 

Shiro let out a laugh again and glanced toward the pod. They were nearing the edge, so he grabbed on and hoisted himself onto the deck. Lance looked down at his feet.

 

“Honestly, I think those things are the weirdest.” Lance leaned his elbows up on the ledge and reached out to poke one of Shiro’s feet. “How do they even work in the water?”

 

“I don’t really go swimming too much.” Shiro turned away from the water and pulled the hatch open on his pod. Allura zapped into existence on her little table.

 

“Shiro!” She let out the world’s biggest sigh. “I thought you’d died! The life support systems on your suit malfunctioned-”

 

“I kind of got that.” Shiro started unzipping his jumpsuit before remembering that Lance was literally right behind him. He turned to look and sure enough, the merperson was still leaning on the edge of his deck, staring right at him. “I’m um. I’m going to change really quick.”

 

“Okay.” He kept staring. Shiro blinked a couple of times.

 

“Could you maybe… turn around?” Lance jumped a bit and quickly turned his head.

 

Shiro was going to have to see how this all played out.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me on [my tumblr](http://cruciifyme.tumblr.com)


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